Qinglong, China’s Advanced Humanoid Robot, Showcased at WAIC 2024

China has showcased its first full-sized, multipurpose humanoid robot at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference. Qinglong, who was 180 cm tall, cleaned desks after listening to staff members’ directions.

The National and Local Co-Built Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center in Shanghai is the machine’s creator, which can walk steadily on inclined surfaces and has motion control similar to that of a human.

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According to Xu Bin, general manager of the innovation centre, “We have released the full stack of technology related to humanoid robots to the public as open source, including the brain, cerebellum, and limb technologies.”

“It will allow for greater applications in areas like household services and caregiving in the next five to ten years or even longer,” Xu continued.

Its anthropomorphic motion control and highly bionic torso enable multi-modal mobility, perception, interaction, and manipulation. TechNode reports that Qinglong attained 400 N·m (Newton-meters) of maximum joint peak torque and 400 TOPs (Tera Operations Per Second) of processing power with 43 active degrees of freedom.

The device can dodge obstacles with agility and can walk quickly.

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Chief scientist Jiang Lei of the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center said, “We named our humanoid robot Qinglong [meaning green dragon in Chinese] and initiated an open-source community for humanoid robotics in the Year of the Dragon this year.”

“We aim to create a Chinese-only humanoid robot innovation community by introducing a new model every year, each named after an animal from the Chinese zodiac, through open-sourcing.”

The humanoid robot at WAIC was instructed to arrange the fruit and bread individually. “Hello, I will arrange the bread and fruit separately,” the bot responded.

The humanoid robot picked up a piece of soft bread with its steel fingers and placed it into the basket on the table.

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A registered capital of one billion RMB ($140 million) was used to construct the robot.

The open-source general-purpose robot is one of the newest inventions on display at WAIC 2024. Over 1,500 creative goods are on display from 500 exhibitors, including major international brands like Microsoft and Tesla.

This year’s World AI Conference is centred around the theme “Governing AI for Good and for All,” with the goals of advancing global AI governance, creating an open, equitable, and functional governance mechanism, and establishing international cooperation and exchange platforms with transparency, inclusivity, and equal participation.